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[GiglameshDespair]

For a moment I thought you meant you were writing it when you said you were working on it.

[Sirus]

No, sorry :<

I would need to do a lot more research before I could write something like this.

[MDFification]

Has anyone here ever read Blindsight? It's available for free, legally, on rifters.com. A very interesting take on transhumanism.

[sjm9876]

Has anyone here ever read Blindsight? It's available for free, legally, on rifters.com. A very interesting take on transhumanism.

Aye. I would also thoroughly recommend it, especially as it's free. It's an interesting study of what it means to be human, and whether it's actually of any relevance.

[Graknorke]

Over Christmas and my birthday I came into a wealth of SF books, so PTW for when I have some relevant opinions I guess.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

So what would be the lagistical challenge of making titans from titanfall?
For those that don't know they are about 20ft (~7meters ish I think) tall, they are humanoid mechs verrying from no armor to thicker than conventional tank armor covered with a small nuclear core and a fairly large weapon (from 40mm cannon to an electric arc gun). They also have the ability to do lateral dashes. They have built in support armaments as well, mostly consisting of shoulder mounted rocket pods.

[Graknorke]

Making them not collapse under their own weight would be a good place to start. It's not like a building that you can support in the ground, it needs to both be able to move and be strong enough to stay upright, with fast enough reaction to stay balanced too.

[rabidgam3r]

Not to mention keeping a nuclear reactor or whatever powers them mobile and not prone to fucking up at the slightest gunshot would be... Hard at best.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Did I forget to mention that some of them actualy have nuclear meltdowns/explosions upon the mech being damaged beyond repair/being destroyed

[GiglameshDespair]

Big walking mechs don't work as a military vehicle.

Square cube law is the commonly stated thing - the strength of something as you increase size squares while the stress is cubed. A walker has pretty thin legs to support all it's weight, meaning they're comparatively weak.

A walker also has the problem of it's a big, upright target compared to a tank, which is lower to the ground with it's centre of gravity. When was the last time you saw a tank topple over? It's not a common thing. Mechs, however, have a high centre of gravity, and would thus be unstable. Since it has a lot of weight all at the top, it's going to be ponderous. If it turns to fast it might fall over. Dashing would put huge amounts of stress on the legs.

As for weaponry, it's holding all it's guns away from it, far as i can tell, with it's humanoid arms. Not great for recoil, especially since it's already pretty unbalanced, so it doesn't have a stable platform to shoot from: it's less accurate. Rocket pods should be recoilless, so no worries there, but it's another issue of elevated weight to unbalance it when performing it's dashes. In armaments, it doesn't compare to a tank, either, as tanks have something like 115mm cannons to the titans 40mm cannon.

Maybe it'd be possible to get it working, but it's beaten in every aspect by the common tank. There's a reason we don't use mechs in real life.

[Graknorke]

Not to mention keeping a nuclear reactor or whatever powers them mobile and not prone to fucking up at the slightest gunshot would be... Hard at best.

Would you want it to have a generator in it? A high capacity future-technology-magic battery (though tbh that doesn't look likely in anywhere near the close future. Batteries have been the same for a rather long time) seems like it would be a better solution. You probably wouldn't want to field one for more than a few hours at a time anyway since there's only one pilot in each who will need a rest at some point, and would also be a good amount cheaper than trying to work a reactor into the middle of your walking death machine.

[Sirus]

Big walking mechs don't work as a military vehicle.

Square cube law is the commonly stated thing - the strength of something as you increase size squares while the stress is cubed. A walker has pretty thin legs to support all it's weight, meaning they're comparatively weak.

A walker also has the problem of it's a big, upright target compared to a tank, which is lower to the ground with it's centre of gravity. When was the last time you saw a tank topple over? It's not a common thing. Mechs, however, have a high centre of gravity, and would thus be unstable. Since it has a lot of weight all at the top, it's going to be ponderous. If it turns to fast it might fall over. Dashing would put huge amounts of stress on the legs.

As for weaponry, it's holding all it's guns away from it, far as i can tell, with it's humanoid arms. Not great for recoil, especially since it's already pretty unbalanced, so it doesn't have a stable platform to shoot from: it's less accurate. Rocket pods should be recoilless, so no worries there, but it's another issue of elevated weight to unbalance it when performing it's dashes. In armaments, it doesn't compare to a tank, either, as tanks have something like 115mm cannons to the titans 40mm cannon.

Maybe it'd be possible to get it working, but it's beaten in every aspect by the common tank. There's a reason we don't use mechs in real life.

One reason that Bolos > mechs.

[GiglameshDespair]

The smallest current nuclear reactor used for military means is around the size of a dustbin, I believe, though I think that's not including shielding. If your reaction mass is too small... it doesn't.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Acctualy they have a pretty low center of gravity in game
Most of the weight looks like it's in the legs and waist
The mechs in game (ok two of the three) have rather thick legs
Also this is set several thousand years in the future so hope we have metal alloys that can handle stresses like that

Also the dashing is from small jets along the whole body and not the legs but ya I see your point
And ya the guns probably do have quite a bit of reqoil, accept for the electric ones

Ya I suppose they aren't all that reasonable but hell are they a fun idea

[GiglameshDespair]

Talking about their legs, they also have the weakness if you take out a leg, a mech topples over and is pretty much out the fight. If you take out one of the treads on a tank, it's ability to shoot you back is completely unimpeded.

Mechs are indeed cool as hell, they just aren't practical.